Hello and welcome to Dominik’s Little Old Purple Column the 39th of its kind. It’s the weekly column you can listen to or the podcast you can read which is all about games and technology.
And middle-aged anxiety.
And the odd random story I throw in about something else entirely.
And middle-aged anxiety.
Did I mention the anxiety? Oh great now I’m even more anxious.
ONCE MORE UNTO THE LEXICONIC BREACH
Do you know what’s happened? They’ve only gone and sold one of the greatest games ever: Quordle.
“Don’t you mean Wordle, Dominik?”
No. Wordle is the thing where you have six goes to guess one five letter word. QUORDLE is much harder. It give you NINE goes to guess FOUR five letter words. I moved onto Quordle after playing Wordle for about a month. Why? Because my wife was beating me at Wordle. And you know the famous saying: If at first you don’t succeed? Fuck it. Try something that your wife doesn’t kick your arse at.
That’s my maxim.
I haven’t actually played either game for ages. It’s funny that. Eh? We all played Wordle religiously every single day with our coffee and cornflakes and then we all just stopped. Ditto all the other ordles. Quordle. Er… Duordle… Zuordle… Muordle etc
Quordle has been sold to the Merriam Webster dictionary people for an undisclosed sum. Wordle got sold to the New York Times for low seven figures which means about 2 million. So if Quordle is four times harder does that mean it sold for four times more? Or four times less? MIND… BLOWN.
Here’s the thing. That news got me playing Quordle again this week for the first time in about six months so that may well be money well spent if it rekindles an interest in Quordle in folks like me leading to a veritable Quordle renaissance.
And in case you are wondering? On Monday I got Quordle in seven goes.
I got it on Tuesday in eight turns even though I didn’t know what the hell the last word meant.
It was… BETEL.
Any idea?
Apparently it’s a climbing pepper of Southeastern Asia whose leaves are chewed together with betel nut and mineral lime as a stimulant masticatory.
Sounds like a bunch of wank to me. What’s that? Oh sorry, masticatory. My mistake.
(PIC: Quordle win!)
The less said about Wednesday Quordle the better. But I am a content supplier so let’s give you more said. About Wednesday. I fucked it. Failed. Only got two of the words out of the four because I got trapped in what I refer to as the Wordle Four Letter Death Spiral. This is where you have got four of the five letters but there are about ten different letters you can add to give you a word.
In my case the letters were OUND. So it could have been FOUND, BOUND or ROUND, yes?
No. It was neither. It was Wound. And that’s the worst thing about the Wordle Four Letter Word Death Spiral: once you get trapped into a certain sound your brain can’t get out of it. Ironically in my case that sound was OUND. You can’t consider words that don’t sound like OUND. Like wound. (This bit works better in the audio version by the way.)
(PIC: Quordle lose!)
Bollocks.
Ah well. Just when I thought I was out… they drag me back in by the Quordles. At least until my wife decides to play THAT game and kicks my arse.
And on that realistic defeatist bombshell that is it for your free teaser version of the column podcast colcast thing this week. Click on the subscribe button on the substack page to become a PAID PAL for under a quid a week which gets you the proper version which is at least five times the size of the free teaser and you get to enter the Domments section and the archive etc.
This week the FULL PAID PAL VERSION features an extensive review of a big brand new game that I am confident will be my favourite game of the whole year ALREADY. Also news of my latest addiction. No, it’s not cocaine again. Ah. So many wasted years. Also it has a funny wee story about the best court case in years to involve a tech toy and a music company.–And another deep dive into the The Last of US TV Adaptation.
Now while this deep dive is funny as buggery, with content gushing out its every hole, I appreciate some people may have not watched episode 2 so I will put that section right at the end of the column podcast colcast thing because as Rishi Sunak says, I will spoil everything all to fuck and beyond.
So please consider becoming a PAID PAL subscriber for tons of value content and the smug feeling of supporting my work. Click the purple button below for more details. If not then fuck you very much and I will see you in the free seats next week.
I’m kidding. I still love everyone. And in the audio version here is the theme tune again to show how much I care.
Until next time keep it little, keep it old, keep it purple!
(BONUS PIC: Wife’s home made sushi in my radio studio. GET IN MY BELLY!)
Dominik's Little Old Purple Column #39 FREE TEASER